INTRODUCING MAD RHETORIC: Rainy Day Daydream
So, surprise: Set of Constraints wasn’t the only album I finished and released last year. I put a lo-fi album called Rainy Day Daydream under the name of Mad Rhetoric back in September.
Back in 2018, I found myself getting into that whole “lo-fi music to study and relax to” stuff (the new Muzak?) and, just for fun, made a track called Tea Report, which I soft-dropped on Soundcloud and nowhere else and didn’t promote.
Over the next few years, starting just before the pandemic and definitely all through, I’d periodically sit down and throw together instrumentals like this. It was incredibly easy. Kind of the music equivalent of a coloring book - with it being as super formulaic as it is, I found making that kind of music as relaxing as it is to listen to. The rule was: if I’m overthinking or toiling over it, I fucked up somewhere and badly. I had a loose plan to eventually release it as a “side project” (cringe at that phrase) but not mention it to anyone for quite awhile so it would be kinda funny when/if I did.
Last Labor Day weekend I was finishing up another one of these tracks when I realized I had a total of nine (including Tea Report, which I repurposed for this because it doesn’t sound like AW anyway and I do what I want) that I would be up for letting people hear. Realizing “wait, that’s an album,” I Midjourneyed up some artwork and sent it off to streaming and Bandcamp that day. I had planned to pitch it to some of these lo-fi streaming channels and kinda started to, but then got lazy about doing that too. (There is a pattern here; the pattern is called “I am lazy.”) Then, like nine months later, I woke up yesterday and decided I felt like sharing it.
A few more notes:
Not interested in making this much of “a thing.” This was done strictly for fun and practice. Mad Rhetoric is just gonna chill over there and be high on his couch under vibey mood lighting.
I did release this through Polychromatic Records; Scot was one of the first and few people to know about it/hear it for a bit. I don’t think he was wild about not promoting it, so thank you Scot for letting me off the hook.
I plan to do more when I get around to it. Got a lot of other stuff to work on, but this is a good way for me to take a super quick break from AW stuff without feeling like a piece of shit.
No plans for Mad Rhetoric shows. May throw one or two of these songs into an AW set at some point though.